Due to a number of advantageous characteristics, natural rubber ribbon has been commonly used in the clothing industry for some time to provide elasticized areas in garments. Some of the advantages of natural rubber include high elongation before the yield point is reached and relatively low growth. The high elongation ability permits a large amount of contraction where desired and the low growth results in the ability of the rubber to consistently retract to its original length. Natural rubber also has relatively low aging properties so that the elasticity in the garment lasts for a considerable length of time. In addition, natural rubber can be provided in very thin flat ribbon form to make it relatively invisible when enclosed between garment layers.
There are disadvantages, however, in the use of natural rubber ribbon in the garment manufacturing process. Natural rubber is typically provided by vendors in festooned form in cartons or loose in the cartons. Knots and tangles are usually present in the ribbon when provided in this fashion so that when the ribbon is fed into a high speed garment fabricating machine, the knots and tangles dispense from the carton and result in breakage or other problems causing shutdown of the machine. Moreover, the rubber is not provided in the cartons in lengths permitting sufficiently long machine running time at the high machine speeds commonly used. Finally, due to the sticking of the natural rubber to itself in the carton, it is coated with a friction reducing material such as talcum powder which alleviates the sticking problem. However, the use of the powder causes the new problem of difficulty in handling the ribbon due to its slipperiness.